


Stray

by coolkidroland



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Depression, F/F, F/M, Humanstuck, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Multi, Polyamory, but some people are into that so it's okay, karkat smells bad
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-04-28
Updated: 2012-06-13
Packaged: 2017-11-04 11:14:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 11,736
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/393196
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coolkidroland/pseuds/coolkidroland
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Karkat is failing programming, English 101, and laundry. John can smell weakness, and like the best palhoncho he attacks weakness with friendship, relentless and obnoxious friendship. He has, however, delegated all of the butt touching to Jade and Dave.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Personal Hygiene and You

**Author's Note:**

> So Second Base was Hussied right out of my brain space, for which I apologize. So let's throw up our hands and have nothing at all to do with canon. GO TO COLLEGE, COLLECT 200 DOLLARS.
> 
> I managed to con my wonderful partner into doing some doodles for this fic. She doesn't tumbl a lot, but she's at barbaricyip.tumblr.com in all her amazingness. She even let me put in an extra little present for all you folks.

            John’s life was a good one. He believed this with absolute faith, the same faith that let him know that if he were ever in trouble Bruce Willis would charge barefoot over broken glass to save him from the German terrorists. Or, failing Bruce Willis because the man had a busy schedule, Dave would put on some shoes first and Jade or Rose would probably remember to call 911. His friends had been with him through thick and thin, through high school, through acne, through him dumping a bucket of red food dye on Cynthia Plattz at Senior Prom (long talk about how that one hadn’t been funny), through freshman orientation.

            Part of his awesome social skills, John knew, had to be chalked up to his Dad laying down meticulous guide lines about showers and personal space. When you were thirteen, somebody had to tell you these things. Sure, Jade was stuck with him, genetically speaking, but she wouldn’t have applied to the same school if he’d still thought that Axe body spray was an acceptable substitute for soap and water. Parents were there to teach their children important things, like how many months you had to know someone before that joke about peeing in their beverages actually became funny.

            Looking at Karkat Vantas having what appeared to be a nervous breakdown at the copier, John wondered if maybe he’d been raised by a herd of small, easily angered dogs. Karkat was in John’s Intro to Programming course; he had this kind of creepy habit of muttering under his breath at code like that would accomplish anything, but the screeching-growling-swearing was new. And kind of worrying, like learning that your next door neighbor collected dolls, but only the heads. Karkat’s friend – Theresa? Reese? Terezi – had whacked the nearest sniggering bystander in the knees with her cane and then abandoned ship.

            John had to admit, it was kind of funny. Super funny, really, the way blood went right to Karkat’s face, ruddying not just his brown cheeks but everything to the tips of his ears. On the other hand, if Karkat’s eyeballs exploded nobody was ever going to get to use the printer, and John had an essay to hand in. He approached loudly, the way you did to make sure you weren’t going to startle small animals or serial killers.

            “That one’s tricky!” John gave it a good solid whack to open the door on the side. “It likes to eat paper like it’s Godzilla and paper is tiny, screaming people begging for their lives.” He licked his fingers and reached into the copier’s burning hot innards to yank out the crumpled remains of Karkat’s assignment. “The first ten times it happened I had to call over the IT kid, like the hot chicks that summon Mothra.”

            Karkat stared. John chucked the useless papers in the recycling bin and smiled, continued smiling as Karkat continued staring. Karkat inhaled heavily, his shoulders went back, and John worried that Karkat might start really screaming right there in the library in front of the Circulation Desk and everyone. Then Karkat shuddered a little and deflated, posture slumped.

            “Thanks,” he grumbled.

            “No problem.” John stuck out a hand. “I’m John Egbert. From your programming class?”

            Karkat shrugged, his shoulders a thin, sharp line under his way too baggy sweater. “Yeah.”

            John took his unshook hand back with the cheerful grace of someone who’d been hanging out with Dave Strider for seven years. He wasn’t really sure he wanted to shake Karkat’s hand anyway, since there was blood seeping out from the edges of Karkat’s chewed down nails. There were deep hollows carved under Karkat’s eyes, his hair stuck out at unwashed angles, and that scent wasn’t Axe body spray. It was Febreeze covering up Comp Sci major.

            It was so afterschool special, John half expected Karkat to offer him some weed.

            “Good luck next time,” said John.

            “Screw off,” said Karkat.

            Some people’s children.

 

\---

 

 

\---

            “How do you tell someone they smell weird?”

            John’s roommate was technically some douchebag with a purple stripe in his hair, but that douchebag had taken one look at him, said something about plebeians and orthodontists, and had never been seen in the freshmen dorms again. John and Dave had taken no time at all in adorning the abandoned side of the room, dubbed Douchebag’s Cove, with every fire hazard they could get their hands on, plus an armchair they’d rescued from the curb.

            “Oh my god, John.” Jade looked at him with abject disappointment. “That’s not how you pick up girls.”

            She was sprawled in the arm chair, trying to play video games over the obstacle of Dave equally sprawled in her lap. John was almost entirely sure they were dating, but they’d never actually _said_ anything, and sometimes Dave just did things for attention and Jade just didn’t know what personal space meant. It could be they both thought that making out was a fun new way of saying hi.

            “No, it’s a guy.”

            Dave flipped him a lazy salute. “Welcome to the slow, inevitable trip up the Kinsey scale, my brother.”

            “ _No._ ” John huffed out a sigh. “It’s just a dude from one of my classes. I feel bad. He’s a little high strung, maybe nobody has stopped to you know. Tell him he smells kind of like a crazy grandma.”

            “Ooooh,” said Jade. “You mean _Karkat._ ”

            Dave’s eyebrows went up. “There’s some dude running around campus famous for smelling like grandmas?”

            Jade abandoned her game. “Kanaya’s in the same dorm as him and she says sometimes she gives him quarters just to make him do his laundry.”

            John felt his heart break under the tragic weight of Karkat’s grandma smell. If not even Kanaya had fixed him and seen him trussed up in ribbons and shirts screen printed with inappropriate pictures, then Karkat was obviously in need of a few friends. A few life lessons. Maybe a gift basket from Bath and Body Works.

\---

            “Hi!”

            Karkat’s eyes were painfully bloodshot. “What?”  
            John claimed the computer next to Karkat, which usually went untouched. “I don’t know if you remember, but I’m John.”

            “Of course I remember.” Karkat’s frown could give nuns a run for their money. “I’m not fucking retarded.”

            “Jeeze.” John reminded himself that he was on a mission of friendship and charity, and bit down on telling Karkat he didn’t need to be so god damned rude. “So I hear you know Kanaya!”

            “Christ, don’t tell me you’re another freak interested in ‘fixing my life’ or casting me to be in a porno or whatever the hell she was on about the other day.”

            John paused, his password half typed. “You should be pretty flattered, you know, Kanaya doesn’t usually involve guys in her, um. Pornos.”

            Art. John had becoming immensely distrustful of art ever since Rose and Kanaya had started dating. There were chainsaws and ceramic boobs and a couch shaped like a vagina and one time Kanaya had forced John to dress in pajamas and stand in front of a giant fan for two hours.

            “Why don’t you back the fuck off, or do they not have personal space on Planet Buckteeth?”

            “I have never heard that one before. It is brand new! Thank you for introducing it to me, I’m sure we’ll be fast friends.” John flashed Karkat his biggest, bucktoothiest grin. “But since I just woke up with my teeth this morning, and I was really super surprised by them, I haven’t had a lot of time to think about today’s assignment. I thought we could get it over with together.”

            Their professor was big on throwing them into the deep end of the computer pool and cackling madly as they drowned. A lot of days he just took attendance and left the room. It was great for checking facebook, not so great for turning his textbook into something other than a good bludgeon.

            Karkat bristled. “If you think it’s funny to mock me you can go jam yourself ass first into a wood chipper.”

            “Uh,” John said into the face of anger management issues. “Wow. You’re a jackass, dude.”

            “I’m not exporting any fucks into Planet Buckteeth’s economy at the moment.”

            “Chill out a little.”

            “Chill out? You want me to chill out?” Karkat’s voice was pitching steadily louder. “That’s funny, because I want you to lock yourself in a meat freezer until you get hypothermia, your stupidity gets hypothermia, and your brain contracts and violently implodes in on its fucking self.”

            John’s dad had been pretty successful in raising him to be a polite young man. He could be trusted with any number of easily offended old people or kindergartners with the expectation that no one would have a heart attack or learn any fun new words. Mr. Egbert had also taught John that even a gentleman had his limits, and sometimes it was just necessary to remove oneself from a volatile situation before it came down to an unmannerly thrashing.

            “You need to take a shower,” John said. “And change your sweater.”

            He deleted his half-password and found a computer on the other side of the room, far from Karkat and his lingering mothball smell.

\---

            Kanaya and Rose had dragged the vagina couch out onto the quad, where it shone sequenced-pink against the waving green grass and dandelions of spring. Jade and Dave were lounging curled up together in its nethers, and John figured that had to count as at least halfway married somehow. Kanaya was handing out felt tipped markers and encouraging people to sign the couch and ‘commune’ with it. Rose perched daintily on the clitoris, and John decided, retroactively, that he’d never been oblivious enough to have a crush on her.

            “Who drew a dick on the vagina couch?” John asked, because he was becoming way too immune to this sort of thing. Rose had once described being an art student to him as trolling without the internet.

            Dave waved a lazy hand. “Things were getting way too yonic up in here. Had to represent.”  
            Kanaya capped her marker and waved away her last communer. “I hear you have made the acquaintance of our dear Mr. Vantas.”

            “Is he always a dick?”

            “A monumental one, yes. I fear he is not settling in as well as one might hope. It’s probably best to ignore him, though hopefully he does not prove himself an arsonist before he cracks and drops out.”

            “We’ve been thinking of doing a documentary,” said Rose. “Our RA has shown remarkable restraint, but I’m fairly certain our RA is. How would you put it?”

            “Tripping balls,” Kanaya supplied.

            John felt bad again. It was much easier to think of Karkat as tiny and sad when he wasn’t being an asshole to your face. Probably he just needed someone to take him tenderly in their arms and tell him it was all going to be okay. It was pretty unfortunate that John’s list of girls he knew included Jade, rampant lesbianism, and Vriska. Vriska was his BFF and all, but he didn’t think she was much for tender whispering and also she had run away to Alaska to hunt tuna or kill bears or invade Russia, whatever she felt like that week.

            Karkat would have to settle for a friend. Maybe John could find him one on craigslist.

\---

            Karkat huddled deeper into his third-best hoodie, which had a horrible bleach stain right where it pulled over his ass. He wouldn’t even be wearing except some asshole had told him to do his laundry in the rudest fucking way possible. Who had died and elected John Egbert the laundry police?

            Maybe Karkat hadn’t been keeping up on stupid, useless shit like wasting all his quarters in the laundry room and all his time in the shower, lately. He had other things to worry about, like not failing out of his life’s only ambition. Like wondering why the hell Terezi was acting like everything was all right and she hadn’t broken up with him over winter break out of the blue because. He didn’t even know why because. Because evil brain worms had drilled into her skull and turned her into an asshole, that’s why.

            Not for the first time that semester, Karkat wondered what he’d do if he dropped out. Or got kicked out for being the most useless aspiring Comp Sci major in this universe and ever other god forsaken universe ever conceived of, even those that hadn’t yet invented computers or science. Maybe he was qualified to work at McDonalds. With his luck he’d end up being the douchebag who slipped and landed face first in the fryer. At least then he’d be able to join the circus.

            Karkat Vantas, deep fried freak of nature.

            He chewed off another hangnail.

            Not even Karkat needed pity help. And if Sollux couldn’t explain all this bullshit to him, Egbert waltzing into his life wasn’t going to suddenly give him mad skills. ‘Start taking other classes,’ Karkat’s dad had said at Christmas. ‘See what you like.’

            As if it were that easy, and everyone could just do what they _liked._ Karkat was tempted to fill out one of those bullshit create-your-own-major forms, see if he could get a Bachelor of Arts in Will Smith. He liked video games and romantic comedies; he was qualified for absolutely fuck all.

            Ugh. Karkat let his head fall back against the wall with a hollow _thwack._ Screw John Egbert.

            “Karkat!”

            It wasn’t a voice he recognized. It wasn’t a voice he _wanted_ to recognize, all perky and high pitched. He screwed his eyes shut in the hope that it, and its own, would go _away._ Far away. Footsteps.

            “Heeellloooo.” Inches from his face now. “You’re breathing, so I’m pretty sure you’re alive.”

            “Could be in a coma,” said a second voice, low and drawling. God damn it

            “What?” Karkat demanded, forcing himself to look at his new tormentors.

            A familiar, toothy face greeted him. It was a little rounder, lashes a little longer, eyes green, but John Egbert had obviously cloned a female version of himself as to harass Karkat from all possible angles. She was tall like Egbert, and broad shouldered, but Karkat had to be very careful not to look down her tank top at her cleavage. He looked over her shoulder instead, unimpressed by the whitest scrawny white boy he had ever seen.

            “I’m Jade Harley,” the girl said, backing out of his personal space before he was really tempted to bite her. “I’m John’s sister.”

     Karkat snorted. “That must be really awful for you.”          

            “And this is Dave!” Jade continued, as if Karkat hadn’t spoken or simply didn’t exist. He didn’t know who the fuck she was talking to, in that case.

            “Yo.”

            Karkat was pretty sure he had never wanted to punch another human being so much in his entire life. Maybe himself, but not this asshole.

            “What?” Karkat repeated, forcing the word out through gritted teeth.

            “We were just talking about you, and I was curious!” Someday, someone was going to throttle this girl with her own exclamation points.

            “Christ, good to know Egbert gossips about every god damned thing like a girl in middle school. Did he tell you I’m mean or did you get distracted by your hardcore game of truth or dare?”

            Dave quirked half a smile. “Don’t ever spend seven minutes in heaven with John, telling you now. He slobbers.”

            Harley made an indescribable face. Karkat appreciated her horror independent of its source.

            “Fucking noted.”

            Jade shook herself, reasserted her smile, and leaned back into Karkat’s personal space. “You know Kanaya. Her and Rose are doing an art exhibition thing at Mallory House this Friday. You’re coming.”

            “I am?”

            “You are!” She stuck a finger in his face. Her polish was black, but someone had meticulously painted little dog heads on each nail in bright green. “And you’re going to be nice or I’m going to put a boot so far up your ass you’ll be coughing up shoe laces for the rest of the semester.”

            Karkat was pretty sure this was harassment. He was pretty sure Jade could make good on her threat, since she had a good inch and who knew how many pounds on him. He was also pretty sure the police would take her side.

            She whirled on one toe, skirts swirling, and took Dave’s arm. They left Karkat and his burgeoning confusion alone with his beeping dryer.

\---

 

\---


	2. Warning: Involuntary Socialization May Cause Ulcers

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A note on the alpha kids: some of them are going to be showing up, or having cameo mentions. There's going to be some pre-and-post-Scratch characterization mixing, and family trees are going to start looking like thorn bushes. Bear with me here, I have a diagram. I've got this covered.

    “You smell like coconuts.”

            Karkat groaned. Hadn’t he suffered enough trauma today? Couldn’t life let him haul his laundry up the stairs in peace? No. There was no peace in the world for Karkat Vantas. Not like he’d done fuck all to deserve it, anyway. He’d probably been a horrible, murderous dickhole in a past life, leaving a trail of kicked puppies behind him. Retribution was being heaped upon him.

            “It’s my shampoo,” he said, mostly to his feet, because if he looked up at Terezi he was either going to explode with feelings or have no feelings at all, and he hadn’t quite worked out yet which was worse.

            “I was beginning to think you’d forgotten about it!” She cackled, which he still found endearing in a way that made him want to go curl up in a ball and die. “It’s good that it’s all coming back to you now.” Her smirk slipped a little. “I was getting kind of worried, to be honest.”

            “Fuck you, you revoked worry rights.”

            “Don’t be a dumbshit, we’re still friends.”

            “Are we?” His voice cracked, and he thought long and hard about dashing back to his room just to dig up something, anything sharp from under the detritus of his worthless life and gouge his own eyes out.

            “If you’re still up for the experience!”

            He wasn’t. He wasn’t up for any experiences at all, but especially not the Terezi Pyrope experience. She was a big, neon sign: HEY KARKAT REMEMBER WHEN YOUR LIFE DIDN’T SUCK AND YOU HAD A FUTURE THAT DIDN’T INVOLVE MINIMUM WAGE LABOR AND LONELINESS UNTIL YOU DROP DEAD IN A FILTHY MOTEL ROOM? All spelled out in her stupid l33t.

            “Fuck you.” He was growing ever fonder of the word fuck. It was such a steadfast companion, and it had yet to fail him in any scenario.

            “Ugh.” She wrinkled her nose at him, because coconut wasn’t enough to cover up the smell of loser. “You have my number. Text me when you get your head out of your butt.”

            “It’s not like anyone else is going to put their head there.” Jesus _Christ_ , that didn’t even make any _sense_.

            Karkat couldn’t process the face Terezi was making at him, so he pushed past her. She didn’t follow or call after him, probably because she was busy constructing an elaborate lie that would erase her history of ever having been desperate enough to date him.

            God bless singles. God bless an RA who was too pan-fried to ever check up on the wee suffering freshmen to make sure they weren’t prostituting themselves or killing a succession of goldfish. Karkat had the glorious freedom to dump his clean laundry on the floor, and who the fuck cared if it got mixed up with the dirty stuff, and crawl underneath the covers. He stared at the blinking sleep light on his laptop for interminable hours.

\---

            John wasn’t sure how he felt about the RA screening procedures in place, but if it made breaking and entering and abduction easier, whatever! All of the outside locks had the deadbolts taped down, and Kanaya had given John Karkat’s room number. This was probably a pretty hefty invasion of privacy, but John wasn’t any stranger to petty, slightly criminal silliness.

            He liked to tell the story of how he’d gotten to ride home in the back of a cop car. School had been cancelled for a week while they got the stains out, and Dave had hailed him as a True American Hero.

            To his credit as a gentleman, John knocked. And then knocked louder. And waited a good five minutes before he pulled out his wallet and jimmied Karkat’s door open with his Costco membership card. He super-hoped Karkat wasn’t naked, because John still had a lot of delicate feelings about that time he’d been subjected to Dave’s bony butt.

            The room was pitch dark. The blinds were closed and John wasn’t entirely sure they’d ever been opened; the gloom had that sort of settled in weight to it. Karkat’s room smelled like Karkat dialed up to eleven and left to fester in a pit of despair and dirty gym socks. John thought very hard about air fresheners and maybe getting a fire hose.

            He flicked the lights on, and something on the bed groaned furiously. At first John thought it might be some weird cancerous lump formed out of pillows and dust bunnies, but eventually Karkat’s head emerged from the unwashed cocoon.

            “Wow,” said John. “Um. Wow.”

            Craigslist was quickly becoming an option again. Maybe Karkat could trade some weird sexual favors for someone willing to clean his dorm room.

            “How the fuck did you get in here?” Karkat demanded, squinting against the glare of the fluorescents.

            “A magician never tells.” John tapped the side of his nose and grinned.

            Karkat remained unimpressed.

            John plowed bravely on ahead, trying not to make eye contact with anything that might have gained sentience. “So I had Jade invite you to the art show!”

            “No.” Karkat shook his head. “Wait, what? Is it. Fuck, it’s tomorrow already.”

            “Yeah, that’s a thing that happened. How hung over are you?”

            A lot of John’s fellow freshman were discovering alcohol in a pretty alarming way. It was obvious that most of them hadn’t known bounty the likes of Ms. Lalonde’s liquor cabinet, and Rose’s indiscriminate disrespect for her mother’s boundaries. At least Dirk had woken them up with plenty of warning (“Egbert the Elder approaching, look wholesome”) and a lot of aspirin.

            “I’m not hung over, dick nozzle.”

            “I’m not going to report you to campus security or anything.”

            Karkat flipped his blanket back over his head. “I’m not hungover. Get out of my room or _I’ll_ call fucking campus security.”

            “Nope. We’re going to the art thing.”

            “Why don’t you go choke on a cock?”

            John frowned. Karkat sounded somehow deflated. Diet Angry. Like he was speaking through more layers of muffling cotton than his blankets could account for. It was like talking to Dirk after Dirk went on a three day insomnia bender and couldn’t remember where he’d put down his ability to form words, much less his feelings. Which was why Dirk had a prescription for sleeping pills and a boyfriend to sit on him; Karkat didn’t look halfway as equipped.

            The bed was such an unmade mess that John was able to pull all the covers off in one tangled, slightly rank heap. Karkat shouted, a slurry of swear words that would have gotten him kicked out of the seediest of biker bars.

            “Did you sleep in your jeans?” John asked. “…and your sneakers?”

            Color rose in Karkat’s face. “None of your god damned business, mouth breather.”

            Maybe Karkat had been raised in a cave. By bears. John picked up the nearest pair of jeans, gave them a sniff. Pushed down his gag reflex and discarded them immediately. The next pair smelled like fabric softener, which was a good sign. He tossed the jeans at Karkat, and a sweater. If Karkat wanted anything fancy like socks or underwear, he would have to find them himself; John considered himself a pretty generous guy, but he wasn’t that giving.

            “Get dressed.”

            “You are a bulging pimple on the cottage cheese riddled ass of humanity.”

            “You’ve got ten minutes, and then I’m coming back in here.” John gave Karkat a little wave as he ducked out into the hallway.

\---

\---

            Dave was determined to spend at least two years of college ping-ponging through every subject like the rad master of liberal arts that he so truly was, but leave it to Rose to burrow herself deep into a double major and never come out again. The psychology thing he could understand, since she’d been upchucking misquoted Freud since they’d been eating paste, but he was sure the new Art Major thing was a proportionate response to her wanting to get laid.

            Sure, she enjoyed fucking with people, but this was a gonna-tap-that-ass level of dedication. Kanaya Maryam was the art department’s darling, and Rose had no idea how to settle for second best, even in her own relationships. They were going to bedazzle the world in the name of being on even keel. Dave almost admired them, when he wasn’t too busy getting the fuck out of their way. He didn’t mind playing dress form every so often, but his boundaries slammed up against the big brick wall of Oh Fuck No as soon as the phrase ‘artistic nudes’ plunked out of his sister’s girlfriend’s immaculately painted lips.

            Strider ass was not a public commodity.

            Kanaya was a sophomore already in good with her department, and Rose was swiftly becoming every professors’ nightmare. Which explained why two underclassmen had been allowed to crash an art exhibit, even if it was the low budget one in Mallory Hall’s atrium. Most of the exhibit was all blah blah blah bullshit that Dave could have painted in his sleep, and some stuff he could have tacked onto Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff without anyone noticing the difference. But the Maryam-Lalonde Sapphic masterpiece dominated the hall in all its postmodernist glory.

            Dave longed to reach out and touch it, but here came John and his smelly awful gremlin. Someone must have held Vantas down and washed his hair, because he no longer looked like he was a storage facility for rank styling product. Little fucker didn’t clean up so bad.

            Jade leaned even further into Dave’s personal space. “He’s cute,” she cooed. Predatorily.

            Not for the first time that month, Dave congratulated himself on having the coolest girlfriend. Jade didn’t treat his indiscriminate appreciation of hot babes as a sign that he was going to go out and bring home the clap. It had been hard to tell her, because Dave knew that the combined efforts of his mom and Dirk had left him with some issues vis a vis what was and was not an appropriate thing to just fucking blurt out at people.

            Also he’d pretty much climbed aboard the bisexuality welcome wagon when he’d realized at sixteen that his fondest wish was both Jade and her stupid dorky brother. John’s rampant heterosexuality and Dave’s respect for how fucking weird he was being had put the kaibosh on that one. One out of two was absolutely perfect, especially since John had only gotten goofier with age. Like a fine, extremely special wine.

            “As a button,” Dave said, pressing his forehead against Jade’s. “We should get Kanaya to dress him up as something.”

            “Strider!” John hollered, in a not at all passable imitation of an angry redneck. The giggling was really ruining his character acting. “Stop flirting with my sister!”

            “No!” Jade hollered back, in a sibling show of solidarity against publicly acceptable decibel levels. “Just you watch, John Egbert, I’m going to touch his butt!”

            And touch Dave’s butt she did. With a level of enthusiasm that Dave usually appreciated, but his glorious rear end didn’t come with an awful lot of padding.

            “You break it you buy it, Harley.”

            She waggled her eyebrows at him. Dave was rapidly coming to the conclusion that if Jade didn’t throw him down and maybe say hi to his tonsils with her tongue right then and there in front of Rose’s horrific lesbionic monstrosity he was likely to break down and start writing poems. In a special notebook. A black notebook. Black like his _soul._

            Karkat chose to shatter the moment into a million screaming pieces. “Someone please tell me that I hit my head and I’ve crashed into a hallucinogenic coma where nothing is right and the world is filled with festering depravity, monsters the like of the one that stands before me. Because I swear to fucking god that is a horse with a dildo strapped to its head.”

            “It represents the virility of female sexuality,” said Rose, “also the use of strap-ons and other sex toys to reclaim different sorts of sexual play from the male domain.”

            “Also note the connotations of mythical unicorns and the erasure of lesbians in popular culture,” added Kanaya, who was toting around her chainsaw today.

            Rose smoothed down her prissy skirt. “Also, sparkly glow in the dark dildos were in the half price bin at Adult Pleasure Toy Land.”

            “It’s a foot and a half long,” Kanaya said, gazing upon their demented lovechild with pride. “We’ve been calling it the dildocorn, but that lacks both creativity and panache. There’s a suggestion box to your left.”

            “Where in the blistering fuck did you get a carousel horse?” Karkat demanded. “Why do you have a chainsaw? What in the hell is wrong with you? Did you enter into the school on some sort of twisted new scholarship for the criminally insane, in the hopes that they could rehabilitate you back into society and stop you from systematically slaughtering your bunkmates?”

            Dave was impressed, both by the ironic majesty of the dildocorn and by the fact that Karkat had squeezed all that out without taking a breath. Dude had skills.

            “You’re going to burst something,” Rose told Karkat kindly, just the way she’d once kindly told five-year-old-Dave that skateboarding down the stairs wouldn’t hurt.

            “My chainsaw is for boys.” Kanaya was also the picture of shining compassion. “Ask Mr. Ampora, should you ever meet him.”

            “Yeah, you’re creepy,” John said. “But I gotta admit I’m curious about the horse.”

            It was shiny, rearing triumphantly, and reminded Dave of Dirk in a way he just wasn’t comfortable articulating. No one wanted him to be comfortable articulating it. His therapist would have told him to put that shit on lock down like Fort Knox, because when it came to Dirk and weird-ass-fucking-fetishes shit passed go straight into government secret, prohibited territory.

            Kanaya’s smile was lipstick perfect. “A dear, dear friend of mine is quite skilled with animatronics and the like. It runs, if you want to give it a go. Fifty cents.”

            “All proceeds go to the Humane Society.”

            Jade set her jaw stubbornly. “I will ride the dildocorn.”

            She put up a collection for fifty cents. Dave avoided contributing, because he prided himself on being broke as fuck at all times. All his monetary assets were invested in iPods and sick nasty DJ headsets, leaving not one iota to spare for healthy meals or his girlfriend’s ardent desire to sit astride the sex toy horse. It was nearly tragic.

            John had quarters. His willingness to give them up to his sister so that she could experience the dildocorn magic was really heroic. Karkat was still staring at them like he didn’t know whether to run away or vomit, or run away vomiting.

            Rose pulled her phone out of her purse. “I must document this for art and psychiatry both.”

            “Someone should ride it with me,” Jade mused.

            Dave threw his hands up, surrender-style, and she knew better than to push him. He had enough screaming nightmare heebie-jeebies without taking a magical pony ride on something straight out of Dirk’s most traumatizing porno.

            “Karkat’ll do it!” said John, the very bad man.

            “FUCK.” Karkat took a very deep breath. “NO.”

            John dug through the rest of his spare change. “For a dollar?”

            “What am I Egbert, a cheap whore? You couldn’t pay a disreputable prostitute to fondle you through your pants for a dollar!”

            “Twenty dollars,” Jade told him. “And dinner.”

            Dave’s woman had such a way with people. He could practically see Karkat’s brain grinding to a halt at the asinine impossibility of it all. Finally, he just nodded.

            Jade climbed up on the horrid hellbeast and pulled Karkat up to sit in front of her, locking her hands around his waist. John put in fifty cents and the carousel horse rocked back and forth, its dildo catching the light in fabulous sparkly glory. Karkat and Jade swayed together gently, Jade smiling beatifically and Karkat’s face scrunched up like he expected the brain aneurysm any second now.

            Rose snuggled herself up to Dave’s side, all sister-cousin affection. “You’re going to think about this later and touch yourself.”

            “You’re sick, Lalonde.”

            She was also correct.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have been making a concentrated effort to learn how to tubmlr, same screenname should anyone have the burning desire to hit me up. I treat the internet like it's 2007, so I still have an active livejournal. I am such a loser, I'm surprised I'm not posting this on fanfiction.net.
> 
> Doodles still provided by barbaricyip.tumblr.com.


	3. You Need a Hobby

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you everybody for all the kind comments and kudos, I really appreciate them. :)

   Dave and Rose, the spoiled brats, had both balked at the prospect of sharing dorm rooms with the dreaded possibility of other people, _strange people._ Of course Ms. Lalonde had sprung to rent them an apartment in the tiny college downtown, where they were surrounded mostly by seniors and recent graduates. This gave Jade and Dave an unprecedented level of privacy, without thin dorm walls or socks on the doorknob to worry about.

            “You need to eat a sandwich,” Jade muttered against Dave’s lips, because she was a consummate romantic. “Your hipbones are giving me bruises.”

            “A Strider must cut all ways, always.”

            God, he was so insufferably cute. Jade had made sure the lights were pitched low, just so she could pull his shades off his face without him squinting up at her. He was self conscious about his eyes, like he was self conscious about so many things he would implode before he admitted to, but she loved them, and the freckles across his nose, and the miniscule scar on his top lip. Dave wasn’t a perfect boy by any means, but he was just dandy in Jade’s estimation.

            She set to work getting her tongue in his mouth and her hands up his shirt with a scientist’s efficiency.

            His phone went off, blaring a horrible 8-bit rendition of the Sesame Street theme. The ringtone for text messages, Dirk’s text messages. Jade swore to all the little angels in heaven that Dirk knew exactly what he was doing every time he interrupted dates, which was an uncanny hobby of his. He’d cock-blocked everyone from Rose to _John_ with brutal efficiency, though most people had told him to knock it off by now.

            Not Dave, oh no.

            “Don’t answer it,” Jade said, but Dave was already wiggling out from under her to grab his phone off the nightstand.

            “Could be important info. Prime Strider intel.”

            “No it couldn’t. No it’s not.”

            Jade made a grab for the phone, but Dave rolled away from her. She watched his face morph from flushed half-arousal to stone faced terror, and thought very hard about how thoroughly she was going to kick Dirk’s ass the next time she saw him.

            “What?” she asked, entirely sure she didn’t want to look at it herself.

            “My Little Pony,” Dave managed, before he flopped backward and through an arm over his eyes. “Whoever invented the internet was a sick fuck.”

            “You know, if you just told Dirk that this was funny-weird, not funny-haha, he would stop.”

            “Nah,” said Dave. “I just have to figure out a way to get him back, up the ante.”

            Jade thought maybe they could hold Dirk down and tattoo ‘boner killer’ on his forehead. Time for a Rose-talk.

\---

\---

            Jade didn’t understand why Dirk was so dead-set against just letting her and Dave get down to it. Hell, he probably wasn’t even doing it on purpose. At fourteen, Jade had been shuffled into Ms. Lalonde’s living room with Rose, offered a very, very weak glass of sangria, and the mysteries of life had been delicately expounded on with the aid of bright pink diagrams. John had gotten the talk from their dad, and Jade could only imagine it had been responsible, thorough, and wholesome. From what Jade could piece together, Dirk had sat Dave down in front of the computer and given him the porn passwords.

            Jade owed Dirk such a vigorous shin kicking.

            She flopped backwards onto Rose’s bed, its dark purple sheets embroidered with black roses, and dragged a pillow over her face.

            “I am never going to get laid,” she complained into her fluffy new guidance counselor. “I might as well just join a nunnery, and not the pun-kind that’s going to get me laid.”

            Rose continued knitting without pause. “That must be tragic. Not quite as tragic as Dave explaining vore to John, but still fairly awful.”

            “Oh my Goooood,” Jade moaned. “Dave won’t touch my boobs because he thinks I’m going to eat him.”

            “Perhaps if you could pinpoint the one highly disturbing sexual fetish he feels enthusiasm for.”

            “Ugh,” said Jade, with feeling.

            “Don’t pretend you don’t have an account on Fur Affinity, young lady.”

            Jade bolted upright and chucked the pillow at Rose’s head. “That’s different! That is an _aesthetic appreciation.”_ She puffed her cheeks out with an irritated breath. “My avatar pads through the woods on majestic paws! Dirk has weird muppet baby posters.”

            “And a puppet,” Rose reminded her.

            Jade pulled such a face. “I bet Jake lets the puppet watch.”

            “I dare say Mr. English’s enthusiasm for Mr. Strider’s idiosyncrasies may extend to letting the puppet participate.”

            It was not her proudest moment, but Jade had to scream a little at the horror of it all. “Well, I _was_ horny. Thanks for fixing that problem, you butt.”

            “Jade, while I must say that I understand and sympathize with your predicament, as a young lady at a hormonal age myself, you need to discuss this with Dave before you start groping smelly young men atop my art projects.”

            “I kept my hands above the belt at all times.”

            Karkat was adorable, but Jade didn’t want to get bitten.

\---

            Dave wasn’t usually down for participating in John’s misadventures in spreading happiness. For one thing, John had a fundamental misunderstanding of the entire concept. The mental dictionary of John Egbert had ‘happiness’ defined as ‘doing what John Egbert tells you, even if that involves getting covered in jam, and not in the sexy way, either.’ He also never noted it rhymed with penis, which was John through and through.

            It’d been years since Dave had perfected the fine art of staying out of John’s way and having a good laugh from the sidelines. It was comedy gold watching him derail people, as long as Dave didn’t get hit by the train in the process.

            Karkat looked like he’d been hit. Karkat looked like he’d been hit, caught on the undercarriage, and dragged thirty miles before his corpse had finally bounced off and fallen into a ravine. Probably had grass in his hair and everything. Just huddled there at a two person table in the cafeteria, his backpack shoved in the spare seat, hunched over his lunch like a hyena was gonna come snatch that shit up.

            Dave plunked his salad (nutritious, delicious, covered in bacon and ranch dressing) down opposite Karkat, deposited Karkat’s backpack on the floor, then snatched a strawberry off Karkat’s tray of suffering victimization. It was victimization full of fruit and a plate of buttered macaroni, which was just about the saddest thing Dave had ever seen in his life.

            “Dude, they’ve got bacon bits.”

            “Not halal, dickface.”

            “I may be a dickface, but there’s no need to get _vulgar._ ”

            Karkat shoved the palms of his hands over his eyes. “It’s like kosher, you ignorant douche monster.”

            “Sorry, couldn’t hear you over how white I am. Cheeseburger? A piece of cake. You’re the tragically well meaning after picture at the liposuction clinic.”

            “Like you’re one to talk.” Karkat finally looked up, his glare bloodshot. “And no one has a fucking clue what they shove into those burgers, I’m not chancing heavenly wrath that it’s not roadkill chucked in the grinder. Why do you even give a fuck?”

            “Have you ever been driving down a one lane road in the middle of bum fuck nowhere, and then you have to slam on the breaks because there’s a turtle in the middle of the damn road? And you don’t want to run the turtle over, because it’s just a stupid turtle, and also because the fucker probably weighs like twenty pounds and in a battle between the turtle and your shitty truck the turtle is going to win. Especially because it’s a snapping turtle, so you’re standing there in the middle of the road with the biggest stick you can find trying to get the idiot turtle to move so that you don’t have to commit some sort of finger-losing double-man-turtle-homicide.”

            “What.” Karkat couldn’t even muster up enough incredulity in the face of Dave’s awesome to make that a proper question.

            “You’re the turtle. It is you.”

            “If you’ve got some weird romantic attachment to this table and you need me to screw off and give you two some alone time so that you can pathetically hump the corners while you shovel fried pig into your mouth, I can leave.”

            Dave felt the warm glow of hilarious self-satisfaction settling in his stomach next to the ranch dressing. Rose would have so many words to say to him about this, not to mention Dr. Megido. He would only be able to assure them he was doing it on purpose, though they probably wouldn’t think that was much of a step up. John threw food-dye filled condoms at joggers and he was a spirited prankster; Dave riled up an unwashed college kid and he was a man on the edge.

            “Not trying to kick anybody out here,” Dave said. “I’m just extending the olive branch, saying hi, a friend of John’s a friend of mine, all that bullshit. Besides, you already had inappropriate carnal relations with my girlfriend on top of a sex toy unicorn, so we’re married or something.”

            There was a little twitch to Karkat’s eyelid. “We’re not married.”

            “The Book of Mormon says I can have you if I can afford you.”

            “You can’t afford me!”

            A passing field hockey girl looked vaguely alarmed in their general direction. Karkat flipped her off.

            “On the contrary. I’m dripping in so much swag that I could have a whole basketball team of wives. Shortstop, quarterback, the works. Now, obviously Jade is first wife, so you answer to her and no freaky business without her say-so and a signed permission slip.”

            Karkat gripped his fork so hard Dave expected indents. “You don’t even know what you’re talking about.”

            “It’s a hobby.”

            Karkat slammed his chair back, retrieved his backpack from the floor, and stormed off without bussing his tray.

            “I hate to see you go,” Dave called after him, “but I love to watch you leave knowing that tonight you will be in our marital bed.”

 

 

            “You should be forced to eat his gross macaroni as punishment.”

            Dave didn’t jump, if only because Terezi obviously wanted to. For someone who led the way with a stick she whacked into everything, she was a very stealthy girl. Great lab partner, too, best thing that had happened to him in geology. Girl licked rocks, how could you ever go wrong?

            “Nah. I had enough misguided culinary endeavors as a kid. Macaroni just gives me flashbacks to Hamburger Helper. Might crawl under the table and start crying.”

            Terezi stood next to the table, leaning on her cane like the most nefarious of Batman villains. “Dave, I want you to understand the gravity of this situation, because I don’t even care how ridiculous I sound right now. I could maintain objects in my orbit. I am so grave I could be six feet under. Be gentle with Mr. Vantas.”

            “Karkat?” Just for her, Dave let slip a facial expression – raised eyebrows. “Let me guess, you’re his keeper. Makes sure he doesn’t maul anyone.”

            Her gusty laugh held none of its usual glorious vigor. “Ex-girlfriend, actually. And I’ve known him since he was even smaller than he is now, so I would be remarkably upset if you got him pregnant and left him at the altar.”

            “But I want him to get on 16 and pregnant. 18 and pregnant. Sad freshman and pregnant.”

            “I will knife you in a dark alleyway and leave you to contemplate the severity of your crime.”

            Terezi was a very tiny girl. Dave did not doubt her ability to kneecap him and watch him try to crawl to safety. She had both the mental fortitude and the tools.

            “You got it, lady.”

            She reached out and patted him on the head.

            “I wanna ask you something, though.”

            “Of course.” She swung herself into Karkat’s vacant chair, helping herself to the rest of the fruit. She ate like a starving crocodile. “Some people aren’t allowed to ask me questions, and they lead awful, tragic lives.”

            “You’re a cute girl, TZ. You look like one of those animes. You’re charming, obviously.”

            “Ooooh, Mr. Strider.”

            “From whence the compulsion to shack up with the crabby patty?” Dave leaned forward, put his chin on his folded hands. “Weren’t you worried he was gonna up and get you pregnant with the world’s angriest baby?”

            “Dave, you need to stop imagining all of the sex Karkat and I didn’t have, especially not without birth control, you sick freak.”

            “Do you pity him?” Dave asked, ignoring Terezi invading his salad and licking ranch dressing off her fingers. “Is it some sort of ingrained childhood reflex, where you were just exposed to him for so long that the spittle bursting forth from his every enraged syllable was just suddenly arousing?”

            “Hmm,” said Terezi, and finally employed a napkin like the decent human being Dave knew in his tender heart she wasn’t, and that was why he liked her. “Karkat gives a shit. He really honestly _cares._ It can be overwhelming! But also very sweet.”

            “Don’t tell me you broke up with him for being too nice, or I’m going to have to type this up and send it in to a Men’s Rights Association forum like the world’s nastiest Penthouse letter.”

            Terezi snorted, a dragon of a noise. “He’s too loud for my delicate ears. Take that however you want, don’t think I don’t know what face you’re making! But he’s still my friend. Play nice.”

            “I always play nice.”

            “The evidence will speak for itself. I’ve got an eye on you, Mr. Strider.”

            “It’s funny because you’re blind.”

\---

 


	4. A Hobby That Isn't Karkat

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So! It becomes evident in this chapter that one of the subplots of all this has to do with mental disorders, so I'll be updating the tags and more notes at the end about that.
> 
> Temporarily doodleless!

John wasn’t sure which kind soul had decided the campus café needed to be open until three a.m., but they were a certifiable genius, a saint who could probably take the Pope in a fight. It saved him trying to coax his car into living long enough to get to Wal*Mart, at least. He was on a mission, a mission of chicken fingers and caffeine and whatever horrifying pre-made pudding cup dessert they were shilling as a trifle tonight.

            He was paying for his bounty when he saw Karkat. It was impossible to mistake the slouch for anyone else; Karkat seemed to have a vendetta against chairs, trying constantly to find the angle of his spine that would help him slip right down to the floor.

            The café was more or less deserted, otherwise, just one frantic wild-eyed girl typing on her laptop like mad. It was always easy to spot the pre-med kids, since they were the ones most likely to shank you if you said hello. Well, maybe second place to Karkat, but John had already ventured into that territory. He feared no wild Karkatian beast. Scooping a pre-made salad and another coke into his arms didn’t make a noticeable wobble in his pile, and the bleary cashier helped him shove the whole mess into a couple of bags.

            John strode boldly over to Karkat’s table, half-wondering at his own masochism. He walked away from Karkat mad every time, and every time it was like someone hit the little reset button on the part of his soul that held Karkat responsible for being a flailing asshole. Early exposure to the Striders could only explain so much about his willingness to be used as a verbal punching bag.

            “Hey.” John decided to plunge right in, give Karkat no time to catch his breath. “Come study with us.”

            Karkat glared up at him. “Fuck off.”

            “Though, it’s not really studying at this much so much as coordinated not-passing-out and video games. It’s Friday! Who studies on Friday? Not us. Obviously.”

            “Are you high, Egbert?”

            He’d remembered John’s name! Ten points. He’d remembered John’s name and didn’t seem about to question the utter impossibility of an Asian kid named John Egbert, which obviously never happened in such a carefully organized country as America. Then again, Karkat had probably been on the wrong end of his own fair share of odd looks and ‘what are you’s that he didn’t feel like contributing to the heap.

            “Nope! Not drunk, either.” They’d severely cut down since getting to college, where it was a little bit harder to do your homework intoxicated. “Just unwinding. I know you live in Cuthbert House with Kanaya, and that’s quite the walk home. We’re just down the street!”

            Karkat stared at him for a long, judgmental moment. “Why the fuck would you want me to come to your dorm room?”

            “I bought you a salad,” Jonn said, waving one of the bags in front of Karkat’s face. “I would have gotten you a sandwich or something, but Rose has trained me to be sensitive to the needs of potential vegetarians. And then talk about them behind their backs.”

            Just like at the copier the first time they’d spoken, Karkat seemed to shudder in on himself. It was weird and a little…upsetting? Watching a mouthy kid like that just kind of collapse and decide he was doing what John told him. John hoped Karkat never got mugged. At least he gathered up his stuff and followed John out of the café.

\---

            John brought home a stray.

            Rose wasn’t sure how to feel about John’s full scale kidnapping of innocents, but at least Karkat looked shell shocked instead of homicidal. All she knew about him was his tendency to stand just outside the entrance of Kanaya’s dorm and shout expletives of varying creativity into his cellphone. There was a certain poetry to him, a unique way with words that Rose would have admired if it didn’t insist on happening at three in the morning or halfway into heavy petting.

            That and he’d let Jade coax him up onto that art project. The magic of that thing really brought people together; Rose had e-mailed a picture to Equius, and Nepeta reported he’d taped it up on the mirror of their dressing room. It wasn’t often he got to work on something that so smoothly blended his two interests.

            Karkat eyed the room carefully, Dave sitting cross-legged on the bed, Jade’s head and a book in his lap, Rose curled up in the arm chair knitting, the chaos of John’s movie posters and dirty laundry. She was curious what an outsider must think of them, but not terribly invested.

            “Oh hey, it’s Grumpy!” Dave spread his arms wide. “Yo, man. What up?”

            Karkat bristled. “Blow me.”

            “Jade,” Dave’s conspiratorial whisper was not whispered at all. “Can I blow Karkat?”

            Jade reached up to pat him on the cheek. “Maybe later.”

            Before she’d met Kanaya, who treated her like she was someone interesting and special and not infuriatingly strange, Rose had been jealous of Dave and Jade. She knew herself well enough to know it hadn’t been personal, but their closeness, Dirk’s interfering aside, was warm, forgiving, and totally irrational. It hardly mattered that they were something near step-sibling-cousins; they had loved each other pathetically and intensely since they were twelve. It was enough to make a lonely teenager, whose proclivities had narrowed the playing field by a painful and dangerous margin, want to vomit.

            They were lucky vomiting would have been uncouth.

            “Sit!” John urged. “We can turn the playstation back on, or shitty reality television, or a movie. Douchebag Cove is a treasure trove of options.”

            “You four are an incestuous clusterfuck of in-jokes and incoherence, aren’t you?”

            Rose didn’t try very hard not to smirk “More incestuous than you know.”

            “The fuck?”

            “Rose,” John scolded, guiding Karkat to a beanbag and practically shoving him into it. He took a deep breath. “Jade is my half-sister. And our dad is married to their mom.”

            “It is some fucking traumatizing anime bullshit,” said Dave. “Star-crossed lovers, both alike in dignity, suddenly siblings. Though Ma and Mr. Egbert didn’t really shack up together until we were sixteen.”

            “Sneaking out for sex was super easy,” Jade said right at the creeped out expression on Karkat’s face.

            Dave smoothly cut out any talk of Dirk, which was his business and his personal preference. One day, Rose was going to draw up a family tree, perhaps printed on a small business card to hand out to strangers.

            “Yeah, I’m just going to assume that like twenty different douchebags just threw themselves at each other until you four assholes popped out and whatever fucking you get up to is going to create hideous mutant babies.”

            “I promise we’re bringing unique new genetic mixes to the bloodline,” Jade told him, very solemnly and ignoring the way people mentioning babies made Dave’s eyebrows twitch.

            John shoved a plastic carton under Karkat’s nose. “Less worrying about Jade and Dave’s step-pseudo-incest babies and more eating. God, between you and Dave I’m going to call the eating disorder hotline.”

            Dave knew this argument inside and out. “Canned ravioli is so food.”

            Rose made a rude little gagging sound. Their mother had only fed them the best in free-range, organic, morally sourced super foods designed for a healthy, balanced diet and well paired with alcohol. Chef Boyardee was all Dirk’s fault.

            “Canned ravioli is a sin against nature,” Karkat said, jabbing his plastic fork towards Dave. “You might as well pry out your own sphincter, fry it up in the dregs from a prison bus’s fuel pan, and chow down. You’d get the same nutritional value, and at least some sense of self-satisfaction because you actually contributed to the continuation of your own nasty ass habits.”

            “You take my sphincter and my ass will sure as shit be nasty,” said Dave.

            “Children,” Rose scolded as John handed her a marvelously breaded and deep fried chicken sandwich. Take that, mother. “Some of us are attempting to eat, and care not one whit for discussion regarding Dave’s rear end.”

            “I don’t know,” said Jade. “Dave’s butt really helps me work up an appetite.”

            John called a halt to the conversation, claiming that Dave’s butt made him uncomfortable in all situations.

\---

            Dave woke up way too few hours after they’d all passed out, his phone alarm shrill in his ear. The others were used to sleeping through it by now, at least. He pried himself away from Jade, wiped his drool off her shoulder with the edge of the sheet, and fumbled his sunglasses onto his face to ward off the treacherous light of dawn. Someone had invented 8 am, and that had been a bad idea all around.

            John and Rose were friend cuddling on the other bed. They’d taken to the brother-sister relationship that Mr. Egbert and Mom had always hoped for. Dave and Jade had fucked that one up in spectacular fashion. Oops, sorry, making out, hope _that’s_ not awkward. Doing it anyway! It was like the made for tv feel good movie of the year.

            There was a lump on the floor, made of pillows, beanbags, and John’s new best friend, Karkat. Who looked less like he wanted the world to explode into a fiery death when he was asleep, at least. Softened the lines of his face. Cute guy, in a Napoleon sort of way.

            Dave climbed over Jade and grabbed his bag off the floor, putting all his ninja training to work not waking up the others. At least it was Saturday now and he could go back to sleep, phone alarms banished to the hell from whence they came and where they belonged. His pill bottles had fallen to the bottom of his backpack, like they always did, and it took him awhile to fish the tricky fuckers out.

            Somebody had abandoned half a soda by the bed last night. Dave gave no fucks about the germs of anyone in the room. Except maybe Karkat, but on first inspection he didn’t seem to have any horrible outbreaks of sores or hideous oral herpes.

            And, of fucking course, Karkat cracked his eyes open as Dave was throwing back his daily dose and washing it down with stale cola. Because this was an afterschool special and now they were going to have a very special chat.

            “I’m a drug dealer,” Dave said.

            “What?” Karkat mumbled.

            “This is vicodin, I stole it off a lady with a broken back. Pushed her right into the gutter. Ran away laughing.”

            Karkat flipped him off, rolled over, and went back to sleep.

            Strider smooth.

            Jade pulled him back down to the bed and the warm circle of her arms. He buried his head in her bosoms like the very good boyfriend he was.

            She kissed the top of his head and whispered, “you can’t tell people you’re a drug dealer. Someday they’re going to believe you,” into his hair.

            “SWAT team’ll bust on into this dorm room, guns blazing, forcing us all down on our knees. It’ll be totally hot.”

            “He didn’t even ask you about it.”

            “I could see the question in his eyes, right behind the burning desire.”

            She snickered. “Rose thinks we’re leading him on.”

            “I think I just blew our chances. Nobody wants to make a Dave sandwich with a notorious drug dealer. Then again, he seems like the kind of guy burning to take a walk on the wild side.”

            “Oooh. We could get matching leather jackets.”

            “ _Monogramed_ leather jackets.”

            They descended into sleepy babble, their banter losing what little thread of coherency it had. Jade twisted her hands through his hair, braiding little pieces, rubbing the back of his neck. She was warm and wonderful and he was going to make her the shittiest mix-tape ever.

            “Do you want me to tell him?” Jade asked, past one jaw cracking yawn.

            “Eh, if he sticks around I’ll spill the beans myself. Right now it’s funnier to think of him playing guessing games.”

            He didn’t wake up again until noon. Karkat was gone, though he didn’t seem to have called the police in the interim.

\---

            Kanaya tackled her costuming duties with brutal efficiency, turning the necessary yards and yards of glimmering fabric into some of the most mind-blowingly ostentatious things Dirk had ever seen. He waited for her to take the foot off the pedal before he hopped up on the counter next to her sewing machine. Kanaya’s workroom was technically a kitchen; a lot of spaces in the club were technically other things.

            “So do I get to walk Rosie down the aisle when you two have your stripper themed wedding?”

            “It is nice to be continually reminded that you lack any manner of subtlety.”

            “You and Rosie are making field trips to the sex-shop hand-in-hand, I’m not going to insult anyone’s intelligence here.”

            Kanaya didn’t miss a stitch. “I could say that was merely a side effect of our artistic endeavors, and had absolutely nothing at all to do with strawberry-flavored personal enjoyment.”

            “Watermelon’s always your best bet.”

            “How is Jake, by the way?”

            Dirk couldn’t have picked a nicer lady to bone Rose. “Concussed. His last jump was slightly left of center.”

            “Are you ever going to tell him that he needs that brain he’s damaging?”

            “You ever going to tell Rose you hate poetry?”

            “Touché.” She stood up, pulling with her six and a half feet of slinky blue dress. “I thought I’d try something different with Equius’s neckline for this weekend’s show. I’ll have to hand sew the feathers. Will you have the new light set-up ready?”

            “I got a couple of things to work on for people that actually pay me money, but you know you guys are my number one priority. So, hey, how’re my kids holding up.”

            “Hay is for horses,” she scolded.

            Dirk chuckled and tweaked an edge of the dress. “Apropos.”

            Kanaya could shake her head at him all she wanted, but she was an incorrigible busy-body. He could already see the little gears turning in in her head, outlining what information she could offer him and what she wanted in return. She’d never snitch on Rose, and he respected that, but she was a good source of news. Dirk was 95% sure John would call his dad if he ended up in police custody, but it was always good to keep a finger on the pulse.

            “They have taken up the company of a sullen young man. John’s intentions seem good, though Jade and Dave are perhaps overenthusiastic.”

            “You know this kid?”

            She shrugged. “In passing. He is rude, but I have yet to kick down his door and threaten him with bodily harm, so I can only assume he hasn’t pushed me to my limit. Perhaps company will be good for his disposition, and I’ll no longer have to suffer his melodramatic caterwauling all up and down the halls of the dorm.”

            “Maybe he just has a strange hobby.”

            It wasn’t Dirk’s place to judge other people’s pastimes. Though ‘set tech for the local drag scene’ wasn’t the strangest thing he’d ever put on his resume, and at least here he had comrades-in-arms. Kanaya was the club’s baby, still not even old enough to drink (legally, and when had any of them ever had time for authority?). A couple of the older queens were the closest thing he had to local friends his own age, with Jane and Fef spending most of their time in L.A. or New York or wherever it was that Corporate empires sat and ruled the world from.

            “Tit-for-tat, and speaking of both stripper themed weddings and Mr. English…”

            He tugged on a piece of her perfectly styled hair, teasing. “Well, he asked me to move in with him, and I suppose it is time to stop living with my big sister now that the kids have amscrayed. But I’m not sure whether the wedding should be strippers or if I should let Nepeta plan it and enjoy the surprise.”

            “Tsk.” She swatted his hand away. “No doubt Jade would enjoy the fursuits.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Throughout this whole fic, I will endeavor to practice due diligence in regards to research and portrayal when it comes to the therapy and mental disorder aspects of the plot. I encourage concrit about this aspect specifically, and if you're uncomfortable commenting here than I will answer any tumblr ask privately.
> 
> ladyofshallnot.tumblr.com


	5. Super Special High School Interlude: The Talent Show

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Because we know exactly what kind of teenager Rose was.

Roxy draped herself over Dirk’s shoulders, her coffee tilting at a dangerous angle. She hadn’t been able to convince the barista to spike her drink, but that didn’t stop her from acting like she had.

            “Dirk,” she cooed into his ear. “Diiiiiiirk. Our kids are dorks.”

            “Our life sounds incredibly incestuous when you put it that way,” he told her, ignoring the suddenly scandalized PTA member the next seat over.

            “Psh.” Which about summed up the totality of how much Roxy cared about anyone but their little family. “I am voting on this being a problem of direct genetic influence because I did not raise him that wrong, I just did not.”

            Someone turned around to shoosh them, but Dirk ignored them. He had in a lot of practice at ignoring people, and considered the effort no better spent than on the other adults at Dave and Rose’s school. 

            “You can’t pin this all on Dave,” Dirk said. “Though we’ll have to resume that point of argument when I figure out what Rosie’s wearing.”

            “I think it’s my bathrobe,” said Roxy, mournfully. “What has she done to her _hair._ Is this when we call someone to take them away to an island and waterboard them until they’re normal?”

            As if Roxy would ever let anyone touch the kids. Parent-teacher conferences had given her a little bit of a reputation, and Dirk was no longer surprised with the kids’ teachers just assumed Rox was packing heat.

            “Just act natural.”

            Dirk was self-aware enough to know that he wasn’t the paragon of normal hobbies, but he’d tried to stick to his responsible adult decision to keep most of it from Dave until the kid was 18. Everything except the most hilarious stuff, and what 16 year old boy hadn’t seen his fair share of lewd humor all on his lonesome? Dave didn’t even like Lil’ Cal, which didn’t explain the make-up and the puppeteering and Rose standing on a folding chair.

            “And stop,” Rose intoned. “Drop. Dead. Plop, flop. Plop.”

            She pressed the back of her wrist against her forehead and toppled dramatically off the chair to be caught by Dave and Cal. The lights went down to a dull glow, and the CD of ocean sound effects stuttered to halt. Some brave soul in the audience tried polite applause, and was only met with Mr. Egbert’s gentlemanly effort to understand and celebrate what the hell was wrong with his girlfriend’s offspring.

            Dirk surged to his feet, pulling Roxy up with him, and clapped thunderously. She joined in his hoots and hollers, because who was Rox if not his dearest sister? The lights went back up for the kids to take their bow, and Dirk knew exactly who had instigated all this by Rose’s smug grin and the flush creeping up Dave’s ears.

            Dirk napped through most of the rest of the talent show, though Roxy nudged him awake long enough to listen to John playing something on the piano that was probably classical and famous. John must’ve gotten a stern talking to _before_ the talent show, since he didn’t try any of his weird pranking bullshit. Dirk was a little disappointed.

            Afterward, everyone congregated in the school atrium like cattle in the slaughter pen. Students congratulated each other or, in one obviously dramatic case, burst into tears and vowed never to take the stage again. Kids these days. Dirk retrieved Cal from a freshly scrubbed, properly dressed, stone faced Dave.

            “You did good,” said Dirk, situating Lil’ Cal on his back and ignoring the stares. “Real poetical.”

            Dave shrugged. “It was all Rose’s thing. I was just helping her out ‘cause I can’t leave my sister out to dry. I’m the very fucking picture of chivalry.”

            “Language,” Roxy chided absently, very responsibly. Egbert was having some Leave It To Beaver influence.

            “Is pizza still a thing you kids do or are we all too old for that bullshit now?” Dirk asked. “Have we graduated on the coolness scale to congratulatory sushi?”

            Rose’s lips quirked up in a goth-purple grin. “Pizza would be wonderful.”

            Dave shrugged. “Yeah. S’cool.”

            It was getting a little easier to reconcile Dave with the wordy little bastard he’d been at thirteen. For one thing, Dirk was pretty sure this was his own damn fault, since Dave could talk to the Egbert kids online for no less than five hours at a stretch, or sit out in the backyard on a pile of leaves and get to jawing with Rose all afternoon. Dave talked, just not to Dirk.

            Did sting a little, seeing as it was Dirk’s own damn fault.

            Three years ago, leaving had seemed like the logical thing to do. Dirk’s presence, having to explain every time it came up that Dave’s big brother was actually Dave’s father, no not in the creepy incestuous way, Roxy had adopted him, etcetera, etcetera, well. It got to being a pain in the ass, and he could see the nigh imperceptible grimace on Dave’s face every time it got brought up. Then Roxy had started shacking up with Egbert, and Dirk had still been living in the guest room, and it had been a little too Three’s Company even for Dirk’s taste.

            When Jane and Feferi had offered him the R&D job at Crocker Corps, they probably hadn’t expected him to show up alone, empty handed but for a duffle bag and Cal. He’d gone from Roxy’s guestroom, from older sister knows best, to their guestroom, and thirty pounds of flab. Never trust lesbians bearing cakes. It sucked, giving up Dave, but Dirk had a job he was good at, his best pony pal, and the prime time entertainment of Feferi threatening to kill anyone who uttered a word about Family Values in her presence. And Dave was better off.

            That excuse had held water until Dave had stolen Roxy’s car and nearly driven it into Jane and Fef’s beautiful patio.

            Dirk had come home. Therapy had ensued for everyone involved. Dirk was of two minds as far as Dave being able to write the whole thing off as a manic episode went, though maybe manic had just pushed things past google maps and bus tickets. Or maybe it hadn’t had anything to do with the whole incident at all. Dirk couldn’t pretend he understood psychology half as well as he understood robotics and computers; he just took his sleeping pills like a good boy. He’d come home like a good boy, ignoring Roxy’s I-knew-it-all-along, for Dave.

            Which had turned out well, at least in as much as Cal was needed for the talent show. But left a whole shit ton else hanging over their heads, discussion avoided. Dirk was old enough, had lived as himself long enough, to recognize his own avoidance tactics. If he waited for the perfect moment to sit down and hash everything out with Dave, the perfect moment was never going to happen.

            “Hey, little man, ride with me?”

            “Every time I get in your child molester van someone calls the police.”

            Like it was Dirk’s fault that he often moved large, sensitive electronic equipment in the back of a windowless van. It was either child molester or stoner, and maybe one day he’d summon up the effort to paint some 80s My Little Pony on the side.

            “Their problem.”

            “Can we swing through Starbucks?”

            Dirk could dig some plain base bribery, sealed the deal with a fist bump. Things were going to work out all right. They’d sort this out, and maybe, someday, Dirk would get around to mentioning Jake.

            Eventually.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Where have all the doodles gone? Right into a story with a lot more doodles, so go read "Are You There, Rose?" if you want the pretty pictures. They're so very, very pretty.
> 
> Rose's poetic reading courtesy of Theophilus Marzials and the best poem ever:
> 
> http://homepages.wmich.edu/~cooneys/poems/bad/Marzials.Tragedy.html


End file.
